Moving Past Your Money Mistakes ft. Heather & Douglas Boneparth

There may be no winning the ever-changing game of money. Heather and Douglas Boneparth, authors of the new book "Money Together," share how moving past your money mistakes can help you improve your personal finances by changing the game instead.

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Transcript

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- When we talk about communicating, it's not just sitting down and seeing the spreadsheets and talking about the budgets and everything. It's seeing past what's being said to what people are really feeling. [upbeat music] - Welcome to "Common Cents on the Prairie," a podcast dedicated to helping you demystify the sometimes complex topic of money. I'm Adam Cox, head of Wealth Management for The First National Bank in Sioux Falls. We're a community bank based out of South Dakota. In this podcast, we share expert insights from around the country and stories from our local community to arm you with the tools you need to make better financial decisions, because the truth is the more we talk about this stuff, the better off we're all going to be. Today, I'm excited to welcome back Douglas and Heather Boneparth. Douglas is the founder of Bone Fide Wealth, a wealth management firm in New York City. Recognized as one of the nation's most influential financial advisors, Douglas has been featured in "The New York Times," "The Wall Street Journal," "Barron's," and many more. When he's not making jokes on the internet, he enjoys brewing coffee, though he can do both at the same time. Heather is used to wearing many hats. On her first maternity leave, she co-authored the couple's first book on helping millennials achieve financial freedom. Since then, she has become a rising voice at the intersection of love, money, and family. As a lawyer, she spent more than a decade in the insurance industry before joining the family business as Bone Fide Wealth's director of business and legal affairs. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Douglas and Heather. All right, guys, welcome back to the show. Great to see you again. - So good to see you too, Adam. - Good to see you too! - This is fun, this is fun. We've kind of made a habit here of doing this about once a year. You were on the show before, and then, we'll talk a lot about this, but you guys have a new book coming out and you actually interviewed Diane and I, so we're getting to know each other pretty well. - We sure are, but I kind of like this like, you know, quarterly to bi-annually check in that we get to have, I love this for us. - Yeah, we're good accountability partners now. [laughs] - [Heather] Basically. - Your secrets are safe with us, Adam. - Yeah, that's right. It's just you and whoever else is listening to this, so. [Adam laughs] - [Heather] Yeah, sure. - Well, I'm excited about this episode because I know we're going to jump into a bunch of meaty topics and we have a lot of shared experiences with money and timing and things like that. So that's going to be fun to spend some time in. But first, I just mentioned you guys have a new book coming out called "Money Together." So let's start with this. Tell me about the book and how it came together. - The book is about how to communicate better about money with your partner. It's about all the conversations that we're not having that we should be having, because we know that money is not just money. Money is all the feelings, the sentiments, the values, the fears. It's a lot of emotion bottled up in the way that you approach money. Now imagine doing that with somebody else with all the baggage that they bring to the table too. It is not as simple as dollars and cents, and we're here to kind of show you there's a lot more going on and there are many better ways that we can be approaching this as a team, as a couple, as a unit, to try and create better couple equity because I firmly believe that equity out in the world, particularly for women, begins at home. Doug, anything to add? - Yeah. No, spot on. I think money in general is a very tough topic to talk about with people. And I think it's particularly difficult to talk about with the person you love the most. You are reaching into just emotional areas that tap into parts of your life that existed long before you ever met your partner, and you kind of have to unearth them and be able to level set both of you to understand where you're coming from before you even have a shot at really effectively communicating together. We wanted to address that head on. We get to tell some beautiful stories, anchoring into stories of our own, but the stories that we get to share, Adam, you're in there as well, you know, to kind of explain why these are hard things to talk about. And hopefully, when you read a story that resonates with you or there's something that says, "Ah, that's us," we can bring down those walls that are preventing people from having the type of communication that's necessary to play the game. - Love it. Well, speaking of a story that resonated, yeah, there was one in there about Diane and I. So it's funny because we had this conversation, you guys were putting together the book and you were interviewing couples and wanted to get money stories and, you know, so you graciously asked Diane and I to share our story. And a lot of what we focused on in that story was probably the biggest part for Diane and I was our, or I should say, my student loan issue that we had to work through when we first got together. And, you know, it's interesting, when I was reading your copy you sent of the book, I was like, "Oh, this is great, this is great." And all of a sudden, chapter nine hits and it's called "Diablo." I was like, "Wait a minute." I think that's my story. And now, no, just, you know, point of clarification, you guys weren't calling me the devil, but- - No. - A deep track from our story is the fact that we had, you know, $220,000 in student loans that I had accumulated to get graduate degrees. And to pay those things off, Diane and I really needed a common enemy. And so we had an account that we called Diablo. It was a savings account where we put all the money in that was going towards paying back that student loan. And so, I think that's a really great place to start because you guys had a very similar experience with graduate school debt. And so maybe what I'll do, I'll read an excerpt from "Chapter 9: Diablo," and then we'll launch off from there. Does that work? - Yes, this is the first time too that anyone has ever said, "We're going to read an excerpt from the book." - Oh really? - On a podcast, I love this. - This is like a book reading. - I'm excited. - Yes. - Let's do it. - Is this Barnes and Noble? What is this? So it goes like this, "When we first met Adam and his wife Diane, I quickly realized our paths were similar. We both earned our undergrad degrees from state universities. We both wanted higher income careers. We both believed the pamphlets and statistics telling us that law school would get us there. We both graduated as a global economy collapsed," which we'll talk about, "and we both borrowed more than $200,000, and that's where our similarities end." Interesting. So, okay, so let's talk about what was different. You mentioned in that chapter the difference or distinction between guilt, which is what I felt with the loan. And Heather, you talked about shame. So tell me about that. - When I first heard your story, it struck me because it was so similar to mine, right? - Yeah. - And I really sat with that for a while. I knew I wanted to use your story, but I didn't know how, because I said, how can two people with such similar stories have taken away something so different from the experience, right? And I realized that that was the story in itself, right? In this section, the second section of "Money Together" is all about mistakes. And that word, you know, that's an uncomfortable word in itself, right? There's people who shy away from that word, as you should, because there is a difference between a mistake, a misstep, a little bump in the road or a short veer off course, right? But mistakes are stories that we tell ourselves about some of the things that we do. And I think the thing that struck me so deeply was that you and Diane, and me and Doug, but also like really me, I was telling myself a totally different story than the one that you two were telling yourselves about the debt. - Mm. - And so that became the key to kind of unearthing this like real hurdle that people go through when they make a money decision that maybe either doesn't go the way that they plan for it to go, or when things just don't work out the way you want them to. I mean, like, the story and the messaging that you give yourself over that, like, it can really be so impactful on not only your life personally, but on your entire household, on your relationship, and on your path forward. So that was the thing that really struck me, you know, whereas you two were able to kind of say, okay, this may suck for now, but what we're going to do is we're going to, we have a plan, we've got an account, we've got a common enemy, as you said. I mean, I love what you did with it. It was very different. Like, I was swallowed up by the decision that I made. And a lot of it goes back to, again, like, your past, your childhood. Like, the reasons that I made the decisions that I made, like, what I expected becoming a lawyer would do for me as a person. And when those things like weren't working out because the economy had collapsed all around us, like, the shame, like the best way I can put it is, and the best way I can put it is that I didn't have debt. The debt was me. - Hmm. - That's the easiest way to put it. - What I love about this chapter is just that you guys have had almost an identical or parallel pathway into acquiring this debt under the same circumstances and time and where we are. But what's very different is you are different, you grew up differently. The values that were instilled in you are different. The narrative, the whole first section of the book about beginnings is completely different for the two of you, so it should not be a surprise that the way you internalize or approach that debt would be completely different. You two would need to have had the same parents and the same beginnings in order to have even a shot at having the same outcome. So that's how, again, the book kind of builds on that from that very beginning section of trying to figure out how you feel about money and how that then shapes how you're going to treat that with your partner moving forward. - Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I've reflected obviously a lot on that student loan journey. And I think back to when I first took out the loan and I talked to my dad. My dad was a farmer, and so he was very used to using debt as a tool to build up his livelihood. And I was like, "Oh man, this seems like a lot of money." He's like, "Nah, it's not that big a deal." He's like, "You got to invest and you got to, this is a pathway to do something bigger." And I thought, "Okay, well, if he's comfortable with it, then I'm comfortable with it." But I never really thought, I guess I probably wasn't mature enough to say, "Well, maybe we have different risk tolerances or maybe we have different life experiences." And so, for me, it wasn't that big a deal, I just knew it was something I wanted to get beyond. And the guilt that I felt was that every two weeks when I saw the money come in and then them money go out, I thought, "Well, this really sucks because we're working our a***s off, we want to get a house, we want to build a family, and all those things and all this money keeps going out. And I did that." But Diane, to her credit, she never blamed me. She never thought anything of it. She was just like, "Listen, it is what it is. We're going to get through it and the end is worth the means." And thankfully, that was true. Did you guys have similar conversations? I know you wore this pretty heavy, Heather, but Douglas, like, what was your role in this and how'd you navigate it? - It's very interesting, we don't get too much into the details about watching my father, you know, build a financial planning practice and what that looked like leading up to 2008. But, you know, just like Heather had her own experience with taking on debt, I watched that through my own father at a precarious time in the economy, which really shaped how I feel, you mentioned your risk tolerance, it probably made me become more conservative when I thought about growing your business, the parallel of that against the story your father shared with you. I was taught that same lesson. "Look, you're going to have to spend money to make money." But I watched that happen and it did not pan out, which had forever shaped me as being conservative when it came to throwing money into our business is actually Heather, through her experience that pushes me to be a little bit more aggressive, which is actually quite interesting given her experience of taking out that debt. It's very, you know, it speaks to just how wild and absolutely twisted this can all be and how important it is for us to have these conversations as often as we do so we can get it straight and make those decisions together. - Well, I actually had a similar conversation with my dad when I was approaching the law school decision. He said the same thing, "You have to invest in yourself, spend money to make money," like, all the adults in the room, and maybe the problem was, when I look back, was that I didn't consider myself an adult in the room when that decision was being made. I looked, I mean, I was 21, I was young for graduating college. I was 21 going straight into law school. I just wanted to go to the best school I got into because that's kind of like the way the inertia of higher education goes for like elder millennials. Like, that the messaging at the time was like, "You go to the best one you get into." - Yep. - "It doesn't matter if it's more money," like, it sounds crazy now because I think that, like, I think, I hope that this generation of college students takes a little, they seem as though they're taking a little bit of a more careful approach and really understanding the ROI of their higher education. But at the time, like, it was just like, you go to the best school you get into, you figure it out, you invest in yourself, and it's going to work out. That was like the millennial higher education messaging. And so, I received that message from the university and from the financial aid office. I had that message co-signed by my father who said the same thing, but it was still my risk. Like, I was still the one left holding the bag, and I think that was like the biggest rude awakening of my adult life, clearly. - Yep. - What's really interesting is I actually did not find the debt that we were taking out for Heather, the law school debt, you know, another six figures for me to go to business school. That was actually the investment and the thinking around investing in yourself that I bit down hard on, and believed in. And whether Heather became the cautionary tale, and mine was cool, here's how we're going to take this debt, and get clients, and build the practice out of it. I was less worried about that than actually leveraging a practice, the business asset itself, because of the experience and what I saw. And Heather and I came at the student loan debt from really two different angles. I always thought that, you know, no matter how big that balance was, our joint balance was, we would find a way, that we were, you know, I knew she was smart enough, productive enough, I knew I could do that as well and we would find our way there. It also got caught up in a low interest rate environment where there were opportunities to put, you know, whether it was refinancing data or better controls around that so we could see the pathway forward. I think once Heather saw the light, you know, at the end of the tunnel, which was very difficult to see in those early years around it. - Well, to your point, it wasn't just about seeing the light, the difference is I didn't believe I was smart enough and capable enough in that moment because I was so deep in the shame of the experience of graduating without the job that I dreamed that I would have without the income, without the independence that I was seeking out of the experience, without the meaning that I was seeking from the experience either. Like, I became an insurance attorney, that wasn't what I went to law school for. Like, do you know what I mean? - Yes. - Like, nothing was working out, to be clear. So where I was coming from wasn't just like, yeah, seeing the light on paper was kind of like, you know, was great years later, but like, I had to believe that I even deserved the chance to even make financial decisions again because that, and that is something in the entire section on mistakes that I think is really important for people to understand is that you lose confidence in like, people lose confidence in their ability to handle money in all sorts of ways. And you have to ask yourself how you're talking to yourself about your mistakes and how you're talking to your partner about theirs. - Yeah. So, on that thread, do you think going to law school, taking out the debt was a mistake? - I don't think becoming a lawyer was a mistake. I think maybe attending that law school for that price tag was a mistake when I had opportunities and I had money at other schools and I probably shouldn't have taken it, not because, I really wasn't, like, the reasons that I was going to law school probably weren't the right ones. - Yeah. - Or I just wasn't sure what those reasons were. So to make such a massive, massive financial investment and take such a massive financial risk for something that you're not sure, like, again, that messaging, "Well, you can always use a law degree," you know, and maybe that's true to some extent, but not with that price tag. There were other opportunities to do it in a more cost-effective way. - Yeah, it's interesting, a difference of ours, the day I stepped foot on campus to start law school, like, I knew I wasn't going to be a lawyer ever. Like, but I wanted the degree to get to something different. It's just a hell of a price tag to get there. - Yeah. - Another interesting parallel we have is when we entered the job market, you know, we went to law school, we went to get these graduate degrees and we took on a bunch of debt and we walked into a global financial meltdown. I mean, I started working in 2008 and, you know, my experience, I'd love to get kind of your experience in, because I'm sure it forms how you approach money to this day, my experience was I came out making a lot less money than I thought I was going to make after two advanced degrees. Jobs were scarce. And it was scary because people around me were losing their jobs left and right, and I had a giant student loan I had to repay. And to this day, over what, 15 years removed from that experience, I still think about those things and I still feel that every time I make major financial decisions. So I'm curious with the two of you, is the great recession and everything that you went through, is that just merely a footnote in your financial lives? Or do you still wear it like I do? - So I think a lot of the shame kind of got piled on from multiple angles. It was really, really hard, and I think I get this across in the chapter without getting into it because it's not the point. The point is just that the shame can come from many places and digging your way out of it and feeling like you have control over not only your money, but your career again, like, I get to make a choice, Doug's the one that convinced me after a couple years that, "No, you can still make choices, Heather, you don't have to do this." Like, there was a point at my second job, and I'll make this very quick, where, like, I was so miserable and I was so depressed that things got really dark. Like, things got really dark for me mentally, emotionally, and we had to set a date. I said, Doug's like, "I don't care where we are financially, you are quitting this job on September 8th of that year." And it was like six months down the road. He's like, "I don't care what's going on, you're leaving this job and you need to think about it that way for the next six months about where you want to be and what you want to do, and how we can reclaim, like, some of your sense of self," because I had none at the time. So it was really from all angles. - Yeah, Douglas, what about you? What do you remember from that time? And is it still front and center for you? - Yeah, I think it's hard-coded in my DNA at this point. You know, I had one objective which was, I was leaving South Florida and working with my father who gave me an amazing opportunity to learn my craft, to go be with Heather. I had to tell my father, "No, I'm moving to New York City." And I believe that was like October, 2008. - Oof. - And I had one mandate, do not boomerang home. Do not be the one that has to go home within a few months because they couldn't do it. It would just be such a hit to my ego and a mental disaster for that to happen. And sure enough, I show up in New York City when Bear Stearns collapses, like that day. So for me, it was back against the wall from day one. And I look back at that and I look back at the year and a half, two years of, you know, handling, I saw it all. I mean, I literally sat at the epicenter of this financial meltdown, not just by virtue of where I was located geographically, not just because I was working in finance in New York City, but on top of all of that, actually getting phone calls from clients panicking, losing their jobs, really just in free fall mode. And in order for me to stick around, I had to be effective at communicating with them about staying the course when everything seemed absolutely terrible. And then you juxtapose that adventure and, you know, that kind of setup. And on one hand, it makes me feel a little indestructible when I think about adversity and what I've gone through and what those clients have gone through, makes me wish I had money to invest at that time. Too bad we were broke, we got to take advantage of no actual investment opportunities except for the ones that we were making in ourselves. But also the fear that comes with having observed all of that, knowing that, "Oh my God, look at this manmade disaster. We're going to see that again." And that's where it kind of bifurcates, right? One, I need to be in a position to take advantage of that opportunity next time it shows up. And two, oh my God, I hope I don't make decisions around my business that will have me go down some paths, whether it was looking at family business or other people's businesses and say, "I don't want to blow myself up" by what? Over-leveraging yourself, making foolish decisions. You need to be very mindful. So it's a little bit of schizophrenia if you ask me, you know, you got opportunity shouting in your face over here, and over on this side, you have, "You got to be conservative here. You know, you don't want to take that misstep," and it's exhausting. But I have a superpower in Heather to help me push through some of that schizophrenia around these decisions to ultimately have a north star and be able to make a big decision. It doesn't always work, but so far so good in making some really good big decisions together. - I sometimes tell him what he doesn't want to hear. [Heather speaks indistinct] - Often tells me what I don't want to hear. And now here in my 40s, I can very quickly go from, "Well, that sucked hearing that, but that's now going to result in the correct decision that I need to make instead of pouting about it for three, four days because my feelings got hurt." Well, okay, like, that's fine. But what's more important is making the right decision or what you think at the time is the right decision so you can move forward to the thing that you need to be doing. - I think that experience, you used the phrase hard-coded, I think that experience for people in our age demographic really is hard-coded. I mean, I think about the safety net that I require in my financial life. I mean, people five years younger think I'm absolutely crazy. It's like, "Well, I need cash at this level in order to be able to sleep." And they're like, "Are you expecting to have to buy a new house? Like, what are you doing?" - People would think we're nuts with that too. - Yeah, yeah, they do. But when you have everything taken away and it all, like, in a flash, it's like, it just changes you. - When you really, really, sorry, Heath, when you really, really do not want to become the thing that you fear most or you take on the outside risk, outsized risk of starting your own business or bringing your significant other into a business and saying goodbye to stability on top of that, it's just so fascinating to me how yes, here we are marred by this catastrophic economic event. Again, back to that like schizophrenia, we won't do this or we will stack so much cash that it sounds very unreasonable, but I think it goes hand in hand with, okay, but we're still going to take these calculated risks. I think there is a level of exhaustion that our generation experiences by playing that game. And if you can overcome the exhaustion of it all, the back and forth, the back and forth, and ultimately take the step forward, you see some really great things out of particularly our generation, but you also at the same time see a lot of people held back by that. And I think that particularly creates a lot of haves and have nots, it's more of a generational comment. We don't have to kind of go into that. Yes, not everyone thrived in a low interest rate environment and was able to tackle their student loan debt and get ahead. A lot of people straight up drowned from that and they still have not had access to home ownership or access to the savings that they need to feel comfortable. I know we're talking about with our, you know, we got a lot of hindsight bias here, the three of us. - Right. - So it's just very fascinating to me how that divide, you know, was created. And I think there's a larger kind of socioeconomic statement to make around that when we see the erosion of the middle class and, you know, haves and have nots, but probably a conversation for another time and certainly one outside the scope of the book. - Sure. Let's talk about the book. So I'm really curious, you talked to a bunch of different couples and I'm sure you got stories all over the spectrum and I'd love to get- - We've got stories. - Some of the lessons or the big takeaways. Obviously, we don't want to steal from people going out and getting the book and those sorts of things, but as you sit here and reflect today, like, what were some of the big things that stood out as you talked to people? - I would say that time is our greatest currency, that time matters so much more than you realize. And I say that not only in the time that can run out, but also just in the way that we spend our time and how we spend our time each week and how much value there is in creating equity in a couple regarding how we're allowed to spend our time and the time we can reclaim for ourselves in the way that we want to be spending it. So time, it just kept coming up time and time again as we were speaking with couples in many different circumstances. I would say time. Doug, do you want to share one? - Given that so much of this book is figuring out how to effectively communicate with your partner, there is a theme about meeting your partner where they're at. And for any one person to think their way of feeling that their history with money, their childhood, their socioeconomics and upbringing is exactly how their partner is going to do this dance or this game of money, it's just wrong. It's wrong. And what you really need to do is start to figure out how the two of you have come into your ideas and feelings around money, particularly with how you learn and how you absorb information. We talk to a lot of people who are just not going to sit down with a spreadsheet, look at a net worth table and look at a budget and say, "I get it. You know, this is where the money's going." - I'm not even telling you that you should, that's the thing. Like, to be very clear, like, the on-ramp to being more involved in your finances can look many different ways. And I think that's the way. - There are 1,000 pathways to doing money together, truly. But all of those pathways start by understanding your partner, their feelings and attitudes, how they learn, how they operate, so that you can get to a point where you can effectively communicate and sit down together to discuss what matters and take action to create improvement. Because if you can't get there, then the expectation that you're going to improve or achieve those goals, look, you might get there by dumb luck or just out earning everything. Also a little bit of luck there, but the real effective pathway to playing the game is by seeing each other, understanding how you learn and meeting each other where they're at, and that is just such a central theme to this book. - Did anything surprise you? - I mean, a lot surprised me. I will say that I realized a couple months into speaking with couples, which became more efficient over time, but, like, at the beginning, I mean, I really went into this project, like, I mean, I knew that it would have a profound impact on me as a person, but I didn't realize, and I joke about this a lot, that like, I received a lot of free therapy, both from like all the amazing experts we spoke with, but also just from, like, having these Zoom double dates with couples and really, like, I shared a lot about my own life with them as they shared with us. And I think a lot of what surprised me was how much was gleaned from what wasn't being said, not just what was being said. - Interesting. - And so, the questions evolved, a lot evolved in the space between the questions that were being asked. Like, a lot was revealed in the space between the questions and having the courage to explore what wasn't being said and to press on that a little harder was a difficult thing to do. But I think it was super important and I hope that I captured some of the nuance because I think that that's kind of like the point. And Doug and I have spoken about this so many times, like, he sat across the table from client households, from couples who are seeing the version of things that they want to see, and seeing the version of their spouse that they want to see, not what he sees, not what I may see. And I think that when we talk about communicating, it's not just, you know, like we said, like, it's not just sitting down and seeing the spreadsheets and talking about the budgets and everything. It's seeing past what's being said to what people are really feeling. And there's a lot to glean even from the silence in these conversations. And so, that was the biggest surprise and trying to, like, capture that in the book was a great challenge as well. - Yeah. - So I was surprised by, you know, people's willingness, ultimately, to share their stories with us. And it's a testament to Heather and her ability, not just to share her own story, to grease the wheel and get that conversation going, but also just with creating the space for people to share that. And then the second surprise would be the feedback we would receive from those couples who then would begin having more intimate and more, you know, and deeper conversations around, we would get an email back post-interview about, you know, "Hey, look, this is what we're talking about now. Or this is something that we've unlocked in our communication process." And that got Heather and I very excited because obviously that's the effect that we want when people read this book. So very kind of bullish indicator, but super, super exciting for the two of us and be like, "Wow, okay, this really does possess the characteristics and the attributes to hopefully unlock a lot of doors for people who are going through," and these were everyday, these were people, it's just people sharing what's going on in their world. So we needed a little bit of confirmation of that, super exciting to have that be a result of just the interviews that we were having. - What about those conversations having an impact on the two of you? Did you take away things from people's stories or how they approach money and did it change the way that the two of you interact with money or talk about it or split things up? - We were given now an entire database, if you will, or a repertoire, if you will, of stories and experience and people that, you know, just like in my own financial planning practice where one of the greatest strengths is drawing on the stories of the households that we serve to help other households, because "Oh, I've seen this before, I've seen this before." Heather and I were able to take that same mechanic and apply it to the way that, you know, we talked about money and the way that we approached it. - I think you have more patience with me. - Yeah. - I think that he allows, Doug is like a fixer. Like, it's who he is. It's a little bit of a little savior complexity, but he's like, he's like a fixer, and it's not due to anything other than the fact that he doesn't want me to like experience any, like, I don't even know what the word would be, like, he doesn't want me to experience any strife. So he's like, he's quick to like jump in and be like, "Well no, but then we can do this." And I think, like, watching other, I think like seeing it modeled in other ways, even just the way that a couple has interacted around these financial issues, he's given, like, he allows for there to be more space in the dialogue around it that everything doesn't need to have an answer. Like, I can have feelings around the way that we're going to approach something as a team moving forward and we don't have to, like, resolve that feeling in the one sitting, right? And I think that that's something with him that's changed a lot and I know that that came from these interviews. - It's still, that is truthfully still very hard for me. But if we are making the progress towards that space growing larger so we can, you know, fight what it is that we need to fight or improve rather, then what a win. - It's understandable, though, because you're a financial advisor and when you're sitting across from a household of clients, they are looking for an answer. They do want an answer, right, I mean, so I think it's hard, that is a hard toggle and I appreciate that that that's not easy to do to say, "All right, well, but now I'm talking to my wife and there doesn't need to be an answer right now, we're just allowed to feel the feels of this situation that maybe we have to address at some point over the next year. But right now we don't need the answer." - Yeah. - Yeah. How do you two stay on the same page with money? - Yeah. - Better now. [Adam laughs] - A big part of the book, right, is how we drifted apart and, you know, didn't have the space we needed to effectively communicate around our personal finances. Thanks, COVID. But we can blame a health scare, you know, a pandemic only so much, right? That's really not what did it. It was really Heather and I existing in silence and not communicating around where we both stood at a particular time in our lives, which lends itself to a lot of themes in the book. But ultimately, we drifted apart in terms of being a couple that would have plenty of conversations and be on the same page with their finances. We came from, you know, days of having nothing to our names and amount of debt and packing lunches and knowing exactly what's in the checking account, which is not much, you know, very large negative network to a time where things are working, right? And, you know, pandemic aside, we created a business where I was outearning Heather, you know, three to four times relative to what she was earning as an attorney. That totally flipped on us in terms of where we were communicating around money. Only exacerbated by the fact that Heather took on so many other roles in this house. We talk about the cruise ship to nowhere that she was the director of during this time while I had the luxury of hopping over laundry bins that she had folded clean laundry while laughing at something funny on my phone. That is an untenable and, you know, that is just an environment that will not be sustained. And we came out of that, we caught ourselves by making the decision to work together and really say, "Okay, now is the time, rather than build resentment, now is the time to bring it all together and start working on this together." Which then required us to approach our finances and catch ourselves in that regard in a completely different way, right? There no longer was the stability that Heather was providing through her salary that got us to this point, there was just going to be our joint efforts in building something together. And now we had to sit down and look at this in a different light. And that was hard, that was hard. And give you a real example, "Heather, we need to sit down and go over the P&L of the business." You'd be like, "The what?" "Yes, I need you now to be a part of this." And, you know, silly me for thinking she would just plug into that, very quickly I learned that that would not be the case, it would be quarter after quarter, sitting down, familiarizing herself, you're going to get good at something, you need practice. - That's the point, consistency. I think that the difference, there's a huge difference between reacting to a financial event, or a health event, or a family event that happens to you. It's very different when you are reacting to that without the foundation of quarterly consistent conversations around money and where you are, and also access. Access is a huge thing. And, you know, so I think those are the big changes, right? Access, consistency, communication, space to kind of let things breathe a little bit without needing to resolve everything right away. Those are some of the main changes. And, you know, in terms of like the mechanics, like, we both pay some bills, like, you know what I mean? Like, we both have certain things that fall under our, but we could do the other person's job, maybe not as a financial advisor, but I mean, like, in terms of the household. - [Adam] Yeah, yeah. - We could do each other's jobs. - Heather is in a position to do the vast majority of things that I do. Look, I'm a financial professional, we're not going to pretend like I can't do it more quickly or it's what I do for a living. You know, why would she want to spend her time that way? But what's most important is if given enough time, would the access with the visibility and would the ability for her to do it be there? Yes. And we worked really hard on that, both with day-to-day, week-to-week stuff and some really dark, you know, hey, what happens if conditions as well? You can spend a lot of time doing these things. You need to spend the right amount of time doing these things in every household. And I think we've done a good job kind of picking up where we had left off from those pandemic days into where we are right now. And I think the most important thing I would say is we've learned that, you know, your finances, you know, they march to the tune of your life. You just don't get to a point where you're like, "We've won, we've figured it all out." You know, we thought we figured it out before we bought a house and, you know, finally got our careers going. That is a joke. That is such a joke when you compare to what we were talking about then, and, you know, a childless, you know, dink life versus where we are now. The amount of risk, the amount of decision-making, how our time has seemingly, you know, been absorbed into the very things that we've created ourselves, whether that's our children or our business. So to think you win at this game of money, a big concept here in the book, that's just silly, it's going to be constantly evolving. So on that note, if you don't keep up with it, if you don't get into this maintenance mode of your personal finances, something in your life is going to happen, positive or negative, and you can either be equipped to handle that, change the game, and move forward, or you can literally have whatever construct you put in place explode, and now you're taking two steps back and you got to rebuild that and catch up. And I know life is only going to get more complicated, your time is going to go down, and your responsibilities are going up, therefore this act is going to become more and more difficult if you don't stay on top of it. - So you two have really dug in and talked a lot about your money histories and figured each other out and how you show up in certain moments under certain stressors, things like that. A lot of couples, I'd say, dare I say the vast majority of couples have not done that work. So how long did it take the two of you to get to that place where you're like, "Okay, now it makes sense why Douglas is reacting this way or Heather is reacting this way and here's what we're going to do about it"? - It took years. - Did it? Yeah. - It took forever. - Yeah. - I mean, like, Doug and I- - Working on it. - Doug and I met freshman year of college, but there wasn't like smooth sailing. Like, we were not, like, there was a very long time that we were not going to make it. Like, where, like, we were not, like, really, like, fully together, like, things, it was not, this was not just some like fairytale and rainbow story. They were multiple times where we had to rediscover each other again, and not just once. Like, there was, like Doug said, like, there was the moment that we thought we had it all figured out when, like, after like years after, years after starting our careers when we were about to buy a house and we were about to have a baby, and we thought that was like the big stamp of approval, that was the big medal. And then COVID happened, and all over again, I felt like how did we, how could somebody who, people who love each other so much and who really have already been through so much in our lives growing up together, becoming adults together, surviving the recession together, and now we find ourselves in this place again, like, five years into my career, he's taken off, I feel totally invisible with two small children at home. Like, there were multiple pain points that you have to work through. And I think that's the point, right? Like, that's life. Like, I wouldn't even claim now, like, it's constant work. It's a practice, not a solution, I think that's the point. Like, we are deeper into the practice of figuring out who we are with respect for one another, and I don't know, maybe some couples will never go deep into the practice of understanding each other deeply. And I hope that's not the case for them, but I think that that's the point is that there isn't like one solution, this is like a journey through life that you choose to go on with somebody else and it's a choice to go deeper, right? And that's the thing that, like, I think above all that I want this book, I mean, it's a love, this is a book of love stories that have to do with money. And I want people to understand that, like, one of the greatest things you can do is to be more curious about the person that you love. - I would go as far as to say this and it's not the result I'm hoping for, but even if people consciously decide that one person is going to deal with all of this and the other person is going to deal with whatever responsibilities they have and be pretty, you know, I don't want to say disconnected, but uninvolved- - Disengaged. - Disengaged. But if they're talking about that as their plan and the big things of God forbid something happens are taken care of, and they're in the know, that is so much better of an outcome than being, you know, completely in the dark, not having had that conversation. People have the ability to make choices like that. Heather and I would prefer you to be doing the work and being tapped in so, you know, things are a little tighter, that's ultimately what we'd like to see. But I just wanted to point out, there's a difference between, again, communicating and choosing the various roles that you want to have in your personal life versus not communicating and assuming, you know, this person's going to handle this and I'm just going to go do this over here. To me, the unacceptable version of that. - That's a fair point. I would just put one cap on that, that we don't, like, tell you what to do in this book. Like, we're not telling you, like, "This is the way you should set up your accounts. This is the way you both need to be doing x, y, z," blah, blah, blah. I think that's like kind of the whole point is that, like, whatever you, if you two are both at the table, it's yours, mine, and ours, right? If you two are both at the table, you're putting your needs out there, you're putting your wants out there and whatever, however you've chosen to approach this is a conscious choice that accounts for both of your feelings and you both feel seen and heard, we're okay with that, right? It's about getting both people to the table, that's where the challenge lies. - I can't think of a better way to end it than that. So you guys, this was awesome. Second time we've done this, easier than the first, you know, we're getting to know each other. This is great. I'm so excited for you for the new book. I'm excited for people to read it, particularly, I'm excited when they do go through the book. A hot take for me is there's a list of questions in each section which are really, really good and they're great conversation starters. And so, my advice is to maybe take some of those questions and sit down with your significant other over dinner, over drinks, and just peel back some of the layers. I think nothing but good can come from that. So thank you so much for doing this. Where can people find out more about you and the book? - Yeah, sure. So we have a whole website dedicated to the book, domoneytogether.com. It's beautiful, everything about the book, who we are, as well as pre-ordering the book is there, social media, we'll tie all of this together, I'm @DougBoneparth. Heather? - I'm @AverageJoel, that's my middle name, but you can find it all, you can find it all on the book website. And also I would just mention that we write about love and money every week on Substack in our newsletter called "The Joint Account," which you can also find a link to on our book website, all in one place. - Love it. You make it easy. - Making it easy. - I love it. - Super easy. Yeah, we really love putting this content out here, and we love hearing back from people who have been positively impacted by it. And we hope the book does that. And Adam, thank you for helping us do just that. - Oh, this is, we're completely honored to do it. We share a very similar mission trying to get this stuff out in the public and help people do money better. So we were happy to do it. - Thank you so much. - Thanks, guys. I hope you found this helpful. If you did, please subscribe and share with your family or friends. If you have a topic you want us to cover in future episodes, send us a note through our website. And if you're at the point where you want an expert opinion on your finances, reach out and we'd be happy to start a conversation. And remember, any comments, insights, or strategies discussed on this podcast are intended to be general in nature and therefore may not be suitable for you and your situation, whatever that may be. Before acting on anything we discuss, please consult with your attorney, CPA, and/or your financial advisor.